About MetaCPAN

MetaCPAN is an open source search engine for the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN), an ever growing archive of code and documentation for the Perl programming language. This includes a comfortable web-based view and a first class mirror of the canonical CPAN content.

MetaCPAN was born in November 2010. Since then it has grown old enough to have become an important and well utilized part of the Perl world, but it's also young enough to have room to evolve. As you will see we have many ideas and encourage more suggestions.

MetaCPAN has two parts:

• metacpan.org, a front end to...
• fastapi.metacpan.org the API

So https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose vs https://fastapi.metacpan.org/v1/module/Moose

MetaCPAN is a community effort, with all the code freely available on GitHub (www, api).

Using the API

You can use and abuse the info you get from the API in any way you like. If you don't like the search engine, you can even use the API to build your own CPAN search. So, while the search site is the public face of MetaCPAN, its true value lies in an API which provides Perl hackers everywhere with the power to build their own complex search queries for extracting data from and about the CPAN.

Help wanted

We are always in need of more contributors, see our development section.

Where did you get that great logo?

Raul Matei won our logo competition (sponsored by the Enlightened Perl Organization) with his entry and has been kind enough to also integrate it with the site.